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The little boy, no more than a year old, clings to her, his tiny hands gripping her shirt. She cradles him with a tenderness that takes me by surprise. Her face softens, a faint smile touching her lips as she murmurs something to the baby.
I can’t tear my eyes away from the scene. This is the last thing I expected. Lyric, the girl we’ve been tormenting, the girl we thought we knew inside out, has a baby. Questions whirl through my mind. Is she babysitting? Is the baby hers? The latter possibility hits me like a punch to the gut.
Lyric glances around, her eyes darting through the crowd. I step back, hiding behind the tree, my heart pounding. She doesn’t spot me, her attention quickly returning to the child. She adjusts the diaper bag on her shoulder and starts walking away,heading toward the opposite side of campus, where the family housing is located.
I follow at a distance, my mind racing. This changes everything. The exhaustion, the distant look in her eyes, the way she’s been dragging herself around campus—it all makes sense now. She’s not only running around for us. She’s raising a child.
As she disappears into the family dorm building, I make a quick decision. I need to tell Archer and Zane about this. They need to know and then we need to figure out what the hell we’re going to do about it.
Shaking my head, I jog back to the frat house and disappear up into my bedroom, my mind racing as I try to come to terms with what I saw. Was Lyric pregnant when she turned us in? Is it ours?
The possibility that it might be ours seems impossible. The kid can’t be more than a year old, max, so she’d have gotten pregnant after we left.
My heart clenches in my chest, fury, frustration and despair mixing in equal parts to create a caustic reaction. I feel like I’m going to explode, the anger boiling right under the surface.
As soon as my brothers return, I pull them into my room and fill them in on the details of what I had witnessed, hands shaking as I recount the way the child clung to her.
“It’s hers,” I say, my tone flat. “I know it is. She lied to us,again.”
“Fucking bitch,” Archer snarls. “Let me guess, she couldn’tbearto deal with the bullshit she pulled on us so she found comfort in the arms of some fucker the second we left.”
“If she even waited that long,” Zane says, chocolate eyes darkening. “Maybe she was seeing him behind our back. Dammit. I can’t believe her. Here I was, feeling sorry for running her ragged, but she’s been nothing but a lying, cheating, two-timing whore, just like we suspected.”
I sink onto the bed, head in my hands. “If she’s lied about the kid, who knows what else she might have lied about?” I point out. “We can’t trust her. Not for a second.”
“If she wants to be a slut too bad, let’s let her,” Archer mutters.
“Yeah, everyone should know that she’s a disloyal skank,” Zane agrees. “And we should treat her exactly how she deserves.”
Zane bites his lip. “That’s not a bad idea. For now, no one say anything to her about this. We keep pretending we don’t know. All we need to do is to make sure that she knows thatweknow what she’s really like.”
Archer rubs his chin. “I have an idea,” he says, lips curling up into a smirk. “A way to put her in her place and make sure the whole world knows exactly who she is.”
10
ZANE
Apart of me feels sick. My stomach churns as I pace back and forth in the common room. Lyric has a child. A damn baby. And she kept it from us. Everything is so noisy, making it hard to think straight.
How could she hide something so huge? The girl we thought we had under control turns out to be hiding an entire secret life.
Unable to wait a minute longer, I step outside and head for the Comm building, where I know she’s about to leave class. As soon as I see her, I take long, purposeful strides to close the distance between us. She looks up, her eyes widening when she sees me, but I don’t give her a chance to speak.
“We need to talk,” I say, voice hard.
She swallows, her gaze filled with apprehension. “What about?”
“Not here. Come with me.” I grab her arm, leading her back through the quad toward the frat house.
She doesn’t resist, though her steps are hesitant. I can feel her tension and see the exhaustion etched in her features, but it only fuels my anger. How long has she been keeping this secret? How much more is she hiding?
We reach the frat house and I drag her inside, past the curious glances of a few brothers lounging in the living room. As though they sense the storm brewing, they wisely keep their mouths shut. I lead her up the stairs to Archer’s room, where the other two are already waiting.
The door shuts behind us with a heavy thud and the atmosphere in the room grows thick, tension mounting.
“What’s going on?” Lyric demands, looking worn out, eyes bloodshot and hair lank.
Archer steps forward, his expression hard. “We need answers,” he says, his voice cold. “And you’re going to give them to us.”
